Page:Eskimo Folk-Tales (1921).djvu/17

Rh sat on the knee of one of those present when the wizards called up their helping spirits." In virtue of which very distant connection he proceeds to magic away the ice.

There is a general tendency towards anthropomorphic conception of supernatural beings. The Moon Man has his stock of harpoons like any mortal hunter; the Mountain Spirit has a wife and children. The life and domestic arrangements of "spirits" are mostly represented as very similar to those with which the story-teller and his hearers are familiar, much as we find, in early Italian paintings, Scriptural personages represented in the costume and environment of the artist's own place and period.

The style of narrative is peculiar. The stories open, as a rule, with some traditionally accepted gambit. "There was once a man . . ." or "A fatherless boy lived in the house of the many brothers." The ending may occasionally point a sort of moral, as in the case of Ukaleq, who after having escaped from a Magic Bear, "never went out hunting bear again." But the usual form is either a sort of equivalent to "lived happily ever after," or a frank and direct intimation: "Here ends this story," or "That is all I know of so-and-so." Some such hint is not infrequently necessary, since the "end" of a story often leaves considerable scope for further development.

It is a characteristic feature of these stories that one never knows what is going to happen. Poetic justice is often satisfied, but by no means always (Kâgssagssuk). One or two of them are naïvely weak and lacking in incident; we are constantly expecting something to happen, but nothing happens. .. still nothing happens. .. and the story ends (Puagssuaq). It is sometimes difficult to follow the exact course of a conversation or action between two personages, owing to the inadequate "he" which is used for both.

The story-teller, while observing the traditional form, does not always do so uncritically. Occasionally he will throw in a little interpolation of his own, as if in apology: "There was once a wifeless man—that is the way a story always begins." Or the entertainer starts off in a cheerfully familiar style: "Well, it was the usual thing; there was a Strong Man, and he had a wife. And, of course, he used to beat her . . ." Here and there, too, a touch of explanation may be inserted. "This happened in the old days," or "So men thought in the olden